plasticfree

Free the feast! When shopping for produce avoid plastic packaging this holiday season. Single use plastic never goes away, breaks down into smaller and smaller particles, and ends up in our oceans. Mistaken for food, tiny fragments of plastic are often consumed by marine life and can end up at our dinner table in the food we serve to our families.

Boaters will tell you that plastic is their friend for making sure food is fresh and transportable. Reusable hard plastic dinnerware and shatterproof glasses are boating standbys, especially for enjoying refreshments above deck. Storing food on a boat means thinking about avoiding condensation and tightly sealed containers that are light weight are the favorite choice. It would be great to decide to go plastic free completely while boating but today a doable goal would be to decide to refuse single use plastic or plastic that we use once and then throw away.There are choices you can make to reduce the amount of plastic pollution that ends up in our oceans.

After our visit to Sailors for the Sea, and checking out their “Green Your Galley Guide,” we were inspired to look a little closer at how to make a day out on the water single use plastic free. Most day sailors and boaters are really “picnic-ing” on a boat with transportable foods usually eaten at the dock, on a mooring or anchored in a safe harbor. The first step to a plastic free day starts at home. Here are some tips to help you take the important steps to healthy plastic free choices for you, your family and our oceans.

Make your food! Create a simple meal at home and avoid picking up prepared foods in single use plastic containers. Transport food in insulated reusable bags in glass or metal containers.

Find a basket with handles, like the one Emily is passing up above, or a deep wide tray for handing food and drinks above and below deck.

Bring a large cooler and fill it with ice and water at the dock rather than opting for that case of water bottles. Filling it up at the dock ensures it will stay cold for the trip and is easier to transport from home. Using insulated reusable water bottles are also a handy solution.

Life tastes better with real cutlery! Stock bamboo or metal on your boat instead of single use plastic.

Transport your gear in reusable bags or choose to invest in a “boat” bag. The one pictured below is 20 years old, has clocked many miles at sea and is still as good as new.

Milk jugs, plastic bags, fishing nets, food packaging, straws; these are now common sightings for avid ocean fanatics. Mark Davis and the “crew” at Sailors for the Sea are on a mission to educated boaters and sailors about how to make sustainable choices and still enjoy being out on the water.

From serious ocean racers, to the average weekend enthusiast, participation in activities on the water while being an ocean steward is a relatively new concept for most. “It use to be that out of sight out of mind mentality,” says author and sailor Barbara Beck of Annapolis Maryland. “I remember ocean racing and tossing large green garbage bags overboard without much thought, hoping they would sink to the bottom.” Today most boaters know about pollution in the ocean but are unaware of how they can be part of the solution. “At our yacht club there are efforts to “go green,” says Beck, “but those efforts often fall short because there doesn’t seem to be easy solutions and people opt for convenience.” Sailors for the Sea is hoping to educate boating enthusiasts that opting for convenience is creating a bigger problem and destroying our oceans for future “Sailors.”

The “Sailor” in our title is “anyone who travels across a body of water”, says Mark Davis, president of Sailors for the Sea. “We won’t be taking on other sports or events because we are very focused on the community of boating and sailing,” says Davis. Sailor for the Sea, headquartered near the harbor in Newport Rhode Island, is creating useful tools and delivering a global healthy ocean message to all sailors and boaters across the U.S., Europe and Asia. With the support of Sailors, enlisted volunteers follow “best practices” which begins with assembling a “green team.” With their programs for clean regattas next generation educational lessons through KELP and a new Clean Boating Guide, their mission is to make boaters “catalysts for change.” Good for you, Good for our oceans!

A very nice man, Dr. Stan Szyfelbein (pronounced Shi-fell-bine) told me today that when he shops here and in his native Poland, he uses all different sorts of reusable bags. His favorite is what he calls a “siatka.” Siatka is Polish for “anything that has the appearance of a net.” Stan, a wise man of 81, and retired Chief of Anesthesia at Shriners Hospital here in Boston says “Bags need to be functional and fashionable. Every man and woman use to carry a siatka rolled up in their pocket when they went shopping.”

The cotton siatka (or today’s string bag) is durable, washes easily and can be very beautiful too. Here are some wonderful examples of siatkas to add to your repertoire of reusable bags. Nix the plastics! Good for you, good for our oceans.

W2O and the Massachusetts Sierra Club hosted Heroes of the Oceans at the MA State House last week, honoring those that have helped pass bills banning single use plastic pollution in their towns and cities.

Educating about refusing single use plastic is not enough. The real heroes are those that take up the challenge in their communities and enacting lasting change through legislation. Mindful change matters, but those changes that spark local, city and statewide initiatives, that is what its all about.

Plastic pollution clogs our drains, litters our parks, destroys our oceans and then ends up in us. The plastic ends up in us.

Our Heroes of the Oceans made endless phone calls, spent hours explaining the damage that single use plastic does to our environment, oceans and families, and convinced town chamber, town meeting members, selectman and legislators that now is the time to act and ban single use plastic in our communities. It is hard work getting that done.

The “Heroes” with legislators on the grand staircase at the MA State House (photo: Gretchen Powers)